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Top U.S. & World Headlines — January 11, 2019
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WASHINGTON ― Attorneys for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort accidentally revealed in a court filing Tuesday that the special counsel team led by Robert Mueller has alleged their client lied about sharing polling data with a Russian operative.
Manafort’s lawyers ― in a poorly redacted court filing responding to the special counsel’s claim that Manafort broke his September 2018 plea agreement by lying to investigators ― inadvertently revealed that Mueller’s team alleged that “Manafort lied about sharing polling data with [Konstantin Kilimnik] related to the 2016 presidential campaign.”
Kilimnik, who worked closely with Manafort, is believed to have close ties to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik was named alongside Manafort in a superseding indictment in June in connection with alleged witness tampering and obstruction of justice.
Manafort’s attorneys ― Kevin Downing, Thomas Zehnle and Richard Westling ― contend in the filing that Manafort, a longtime lobbyist who has worked on several Republican presidential campaigns, has “provided complete and truthful information to the best of his ability” since entering into his plea agreement. They disagree with the Mueller team’s claim that the former campaign chairman made intentional misstatements. Manafort’s incarceration, the filing states, has “taken a toll on his physical and mental health,” as he’s developed depression, anxiety and “severe gout.”
Seeking to explain any inconsistencies in his testimony, the lawyers say Manafort has “awoken before dawn” on days he’s met with the special counsel’s office, and had not had an opportunity to review materials in his jail cell the night before his interviews. Mistakes and failed recollections, the filing states, “are common to most proffer meetings between the government and cooperating witnesses.”
The Independent
The failed redactions by Manafort’s lawyers reveal that Mueller’s team alleged that Manafort met with Kilimnik when they were both in Madrid, and that they discussed a “Ukrainian peace plan.” Manafort’s lawyers said he might not have initially recalled those discussions because “issues and communications related to Ukrainian political events simply were not at the forefront of Mr. Manafort’s mind during the period at issue,” when Manafort was working for the Trump campaign.
The filing also reveals some details of Mueller’s allegations about Manafort’s contacts with the Trump administration, including the allegation that Manafort texted with a third party who wanted permission to use Manafort’s name if he met President Donald Trump, which Manafort’s team says doesn’t count as outreach to the president. Another example, the filing states, is “hearsay purportedly offered by an undisclosed third party and the defense has not been provided with the statement (or any witness statements that form the basis for alleging intentional falsehoods).”
Manafort’s lawyers, in an unredacted portion of the document, said it was “not uncommon” for witnesses to have only a vague recollection about events that happened a long time ago, and that Manafort’s failure to recall certain events “is unsurprising” given that they happened “when Mr. Manafort was managing a U.S. presidential campaign and had countless meetings, email communications, and other interactions with many different individuals, and traveled frequently.”
Mueller’s team had previously said Manafort lied multiple times, including about his contacts with Trump administration officials. Manafort’s legal team told a judge last month that Manafort might not contest the government’s allegation that he lied.
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Manafort has been in government custody since June, when he was indicted on charges related to his alleged witness tampering. He was convicted at his first federal trial in the Eastern District of Virginia in August, and reached a plea agreement that staved off a second trial in the District of Columbia. Manafort is scheduled to be sentenced on March 5, and U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has scheduled a hearing for Jan. 25 to determine whether he did in fact lie to prosecutors in violation of his plea agreement.
Manafort pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and conspiracy to obstruct justice as part of his plea agreement. The agreement required him to “cooperate fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly with the Government and other law enforcement authorities identified by the Government in any and all matters as to which the Government deems the cooperation relevant.”
Trump, who has expressed sympathy for Manafort and his family even while distancing himself from Manafort’s criminal activity, has left open the possibility that he’ll pardon his former campaign chief.
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Mueller, Feds Probe Ukrainian Officials Who Attended Trump’s Inauguration: Report
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Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news.
GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN AND BORDER WALL
President Trump yesterday considered the possibility that he could declare a national emergency so that he can bypass Congress to get funding for his proposed border wall – a central promise of his 2016 election campaign. Facing the prospect within days of the longest U.S. government shutdown in history, Trump publicly ruminated during a trip to the Texas border about taking steps to declare an emergency, Reuters reports.
“If we don’t make a deal with Congress … most likely I will [declare a national emergency] … I would actually say I would,” the president told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview at the southern border aired last night. “I can’t imagine any reason why not,” Trump said, adding “we are going to see what happens over the next few days,” Burgess Everett, Heather Caygle, Rebecca Morin and John Bresnahan report at POLITICO.
“They say a wall is medieval … so is a wheel,” Trump said of his critics, during a roundtable with law enforcement officials near the U.S.-Mexico line in McAllen, Texas, adding: “a wheel works and a wall works.” Trump spent the session listening to praise from participants, including Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.,) and presentations from law enforcement officers who drew on seized drugs, guns and cash to illustrate their arguments regarding dangerous contraband being smuggled across the border, Jonathan Allen reports at NBC.
Earlier yesterday Trump disputed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) account of their heated meeting Wednesday, insisting that he had not slammed his fists on the table after hearing Democrats would not support funding for a border wall. “Cryin Chuck told his favorite lie when he used his standard sound bite that I ‘slammed the table & walked out of the room’ … he had a temper tantrum,” Trump claimed in a message on Twitter, adding “because I knew he would say that, and after [House Speaker] Nancy [Pelosi] said no to proper Border Security, I politely said bye-bye and left, no slamming!” Caitlin Oprysko reports at POLITICO.
“I find China, frankly, in many ways to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy … I really do,” Trump told reporters outside the White House, adding “I think that China is actually much easier to deal with than the opposition party.” Matthew Choi reports at POLITICO.
White House officials are reportedly divided over whether Trump should declare a national emergency to obtain funding and end the partial government shutdown, but are exploring options for how the president might divert funding for the border wall if he decides to do so. The White House has allegedly asked the Army Corps of Engineers to examine potentially syphoning money from other projects to pay for the wall, with the administration also exploring whether the Department of Homeland Security could request the funds from the Pentagon, Michael C. Bender, Kristina Peterson and Peter Nicholas report at the Wall Street Journal.
Trump advisers including his son-in-law and senior adviser – Jared Kushner –have reportedly urged the president to attempt to find other approaches as alternatives to declaring a national emergency. Michael Tackett and Julie Hirschfeld Davis report at the New York Times.
“It is time for President Trump to use emergency powers to fund the construction of a border wall/barrier… I hope it works,” Trump loyalist Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) commented in a statement. Graham’s decision to throw his support behind the president follows remarks earlier this week when he told reporters that declaring a national emergency at the Mexican border should be a “ last resort” and is not the “preferred route,” Jordain Carney reports at the Hill.
The F.B.I. Agents Association yesterday released a petition describing the shutdown as a matter of national security, appealing to leaders in Washington to reopen the government. “On Friday, January 11, 2019, F.B.I. Agents will not be paid due to the partial government shutdown, but we will continue our work protecting our nation,” the petition states, adding “we urge our elected representatives to fund the Department of Justice (‘D.O.J.’) and the F.B.I. because financial security is a matter of national security,” Morgan Chalfant reports at the Hill.
Senior Border Patrol officials are reportedly taking up Trump’s call for more miles of border barrier, pushing back against congressional Democrats who argue that additional fencing is unnecessary. John Burnett explains at NPR.
An account of how some Texan landowners are reluctant to give up their private land to facilitate the border wall is provided by Katie Zezima and Mark Berman at the Washington Post.
GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN AND BORDER WALL: OPINION AND ANALYSIS
An explainer on the president’s ability to declare a national emergency and whether this could be harnessed to fund a border wall is provided by Adam Gabbatt at the Guardian.
“The Obama-era fights over executive power foreshadowed in some ways the current standoff over President Trump’s insistence on building a wall on the southern border,” Peter Nicholas writes at the Wall Street Journal, drawing links between the current and previous administrations.
“The rise of Mr. Trump has reminded everyone of the potential danger from unchecked power,” the Washington Post editorial board writes, commenting that Trump’s assertion that he might sidestep Congress has exposed the worrying drift of power toward the executive that has taken place over several years.
“Trump is trying to look tough, but his actions betray nervousness … fear,” Frida Ghitis comments at CNN, situating the government shutdown and border wall fallout in the broader context of the Mueller probe and ongoing foreign policy disputes.
A series of scenarios for how the government shutdown and border wall dispute might play out are floated at Reuters.
TRUMP-RUSSIA
Special Counsel Robert Mueller – investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election – and other federal prosecutors have been questioning witnesses about a number of Ukrainian lawmakers and business figures who attended President Trump’s inauguration events and allegedly promoted “peace plans” that would have the effect of easing U.S. sanctions against Russia. At least a dozen Ukrainian political and business figures allegedly attended the events, also attending meetings with Republican lawmakers and Trump allies, Kenneth P. Vogel, Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti and Juliia Mendel report at the New York Times.
Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen will testify in Congress on Feburary 7, lawmakers said yesterday, posing a potential new threat to the president. The development follows Cohen being sentenced to 3 years in prison for multiple campaign violation offences in December; “I look forward to having the privilege of being afforded a platform with which to give a full and credible account of the events which have transpired,” Cohen said in a statement, AFP reports.
Mueller’s team reportedly met last year with a pollster for the 2016 Trump campaign Tony Fabrizio, according to CNN journalists – who claim to have seen Fabrizio leave the special counsel’s office in February 2018. Sara Murray and Katelyn Polantz report at CNN.
The president claimed yesterday that he did not know that his former presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared polling data with business partner Konstantin Kilimnik, who prosecutors say had ties to Russian intelligence. “No, I didn’t know anything about it,” the president told reporters at the White House, Reuters reports.
“If the data Manafort shared with Kilimnik was used to materially guide spending by Russian nationals to influence the 2016 presidential election … then the Trump campaign seemingly received an “in-kind contribution” from the Russian nationals in the form of “coordinated expenditures” Paul Seamus Ryan explains at Just Security, providing a legal analysis of how the data sharing may have constituted an federal campaign violation offence.
SYRIA
The U.S.-led coalition fighting against the IsIamic State group has started the process of withdrawing from Syria, according to its spokesperson. The coalition “has begun the process of our deliberate withdrawal from Syria … out of concern for operational security, we will not discuss specific timelines, locations or troop movements,” Col. Sean Ryan said today, Ben Hubbard reports at the New York Times.
U.K.-based monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the coalition had already started reducing its presence at Rmeilan airfield in the notheastern province of Hasakeh, with the monitor’s head Rami Abdel Rahman announcing: “on Thursday, some American forces withdrew from the Rmeilan military base in Hasakeh province,” Al Jazeera reports.
Turkey’s intended military operation against the U.S.-backed Y.P.G. Kurdish militia in Syria does not depend on U.S. withdrawal from the region, Ankara said yesterday, in an indication that Turkey remains undeterred by U.S. efforts to safeguard its local allies. Reuters reports.
Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee emerged yesterday from a closed-door briefing on the U.S. administration’s Syria policy with outstanding questions regarding the president’s plan for a withdrawal. “I think there’s got to be some level of conditions with this withdrawal … if it’s just purely time-based, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) commented, Rebecca Kheel reports at the Hill.
“We urge the president to continue prioritizing justice for the Americans lost in Syria and not lose sight of the momentous opportunity that lies ahead of him,” Member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Diane Foley write at the Washington Post, drawing attention to the vulnerability of U.S.’ allies in Syria to Islamic State group violence.
U.S.-led airstrikes continue. U.S. and coalition forces carried out 469 airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria between Dec. 16 and Dec. 29. [Central Command]
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Israel will not be able to deliver to Croatia a dozen used F-16 fighter jets which Croatia opted to buy last year, Croatia’s Defense Minister Damir Krsticevic said yesterday. “Israel has officially informed us that it cannot get an approval from the U.S. for delivery of the planes to Croatia,” Krsticevic told reporters after a meeting with an Israeli delegation in Zagreb, Reuters reports.
A scheduled Jan. 15 s meeting between Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been called off due to Lavrov’s busy schedule, Palestinian officials said yesterday – amid “new friction” between the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza and the Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank. Reuters reports.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION MIDDLE EAST POLICY
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday laid out his vision for for America’s role in the Middle East, telling a university audience in Cairo that “the age of self-inflicted American shame is over” and that the U.S. would pursue a more activist policy, despite President Trump’s decision in December to pull troops out of Syria. Pompeo painted a picture of a Middle East thrown into chaos by former President Barack Obama, and claimed that the situation could only be salvaged through crushing Iran, vowing to “expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria, Declan Walsh and David E. Sanger report at the New York Times.
“In falsely seeing ourselves as a force for what ails the Middle East … we were timid about asserting ourselves when the times – and our partners – demanded it,” Pompeo said during the speech. Pompeo’s critical comments on the Obama administration have in turn prompted critiques of the Trump administration’s strategy for the region, Daniella Cheslow writes at NPR.
“Beyond his fondness for autocrats … Trump’s policy in the region is a muddle, and his top diplomat offered little clarity,” the Economist comments.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
U.N. rights investigator Tomas Ojea Quintana said today that negotiations on North Korea’s denuclearization must also include its “abysmal” human rights situation. The AP reports.
Russia may hand over 24 Ukrainian navy sailors seized off the coast of Crimea as part of a prisoner swap deal with Ukraine later this year, pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper cited a high-ranking Russian diplomatic source as saying today. Reuters reports.
Yesterday’s deadly drone attack by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels illustrates how the war-torn country has become “one of the world’s top battlefields” for drones. Jon Gambrell provides an analysis at the AP.
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has reiterated its call for an international probe into the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, making the appeal outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday – marking the 100th day since Khashoggi was murdered there. Al Jazeerareports.
“Iran’s Next Supreme Leader Is Dead.” Kevjn Lim explains the complexities surrounding leading candidate Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi at Foreign Policy.
The White House is ramping up for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s possible death or departure from the Supreme Court — an event that would trigger the second confirmation battle of President Trump’s tenure. Eliana Johnson and Gaby Orr provide an analysis at POLITICO.
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SEATTLE — Last year, the president’s defender Rudy Giuliani went full Orwell when he declared on national television that “Truth isn’t truth,” and objective facts are “in the eye of the beholder.”
Such language epitomizes the era of President Donald Trump, who has told thousands of lies in office as regularly as a normal person says “hello,” and has demonized inconvenient facts as “fake news.”
Politicians frequently spin or shade issues or events to their advantage. But the wholesale denial of objective reality is something new, especially from the highest elected official in the land.
We’ve been veering toward this dangerous terrain for some time. A senior adviser to President George W. Bush made a famous comment to writer Ron Suskind for a New York Times Magazine article. At the time, the statement seemed to personify the hubris and folly of unnecessary, costly wars and lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The aide dismissed people living “in what we call the reality-based community,” who believe that “solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.”
“That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” the aide continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. … We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Bush supporters also employed lies in the swift-boat attacks on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s Vietnam War record in 2004. Before that, in the 2000 Republican primary election, they spread rumors that Sen. John McCain’s adopted daughter, Bridget, was McCain’s illegitimate child with a black prostitute. That one cost McCain the South Carolina primary and perhaps the nomination.
In the age of Trumpism, the debasement of reality itself has taken on a more sweeping and sinister character.
This ranges from overstating the size of his inauguration crowd to claiming the president can rewrite the Constitution, and denying human-caused climate change is real. The first misstatement goes to the heart of a needy personality. The latter two endanger our republic and our planet.
Ahead of November’s elections, Trump and Republicans used lies to stoke fears of an “invasion” of illegal immigrants, and minority vote fraud.
With lies as the new currency of political discourse, the only “reality” becomes signaling to one’s political tribe.
The castoff from facts isn’t confined to the right, a political radicalism often still going by the quaint and misleading name “conservatism.” The American left has its own blind spots, although they are not as dangerous to the planet or democracy.
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And Seattle, with its Big Tech brains, renowned university and higher-than-average number of adults with college degrees, isn’t surrounded by a wall. It must live in this changed nation, one where a significant portion of the electorate has contempt for such blue outposts. The consequences range from lost federal funding and a gamed census to poisonous federal policies.
Living in this America won’t be easy.
America’s experiment with self-government, even with the “original sin” of slavery, grew out of the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason and the science of the time.
The Declaration of Independence famously states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
For most of the nation’s history, aided by high levels of literacy, a majority of Americans believed in the same set of facts and reality.
“From the time when the exercise of the intellect became a source of strength and of wealth, we see that every addition to science, every fresh truth and every new idea became a germ of power placed within the reach of the people,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his 1835 book “Democracy in America.”
To be sure, a minority always was swayed or temporarily beguiled by myths and conspiracy theories: the Freemasons, Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s lists of communists in the government, the myriad tales surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the 1969 Apollo moon landing “really” being carried out on a Hollywood soundstage.
For most of us, these tales came from demagogues, cranks and kooks.
Also, the warnings about the risks to free societies from lies are long-standing.
“Half a truth is often a great lie,” Benjamin Franklin wrote in “Poor Richard’s Almanack.”
No one captured a nightmare world based on falsehood better than George Orwell in his classic “1984,” a dystopian novel published in 1949. From Orwell’s evocation of the totalitarian superstate of Oceania, new words entered the language: doublethink, thoughtcrime, newspeak and Big Brother.
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength,” Orwell wrote as guiding axioms of Oceania.
Especially after witnessing fascism and communism up-close in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell saw how propaganda and language could be effective weapons.
After Trump’s election, “1984” became a best-seller again.
At least in the past, however, mendacity had a limited shelf life in America. One could not fool all of the people all of the time.
Lyndon Johnson was punished for the “credibility gap” over the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon was forced from the White House for the Watergate cover-up. Bill Clinton avoided removal from office over a scandal involving a lie but became only the second president in history to be impeached.
Time after time, a tipping point came when the republic righted itself.
This time might be different.
In 2017, a poll commissioned by the Economist magazine found that 70 percent of Republican respondents trusted the president more than they trusted The New York Times, The Washington Post or CNN.
“Republicans now loathe mainstream media outlets so much that many would stoop to unconstitutional means to silence them, if given the chance,” the magazine wrote.
To Trump, journalists are “enemies of the people.” This Stalinist construct has been used by every authoritarian.
Vilification of the mainstream media allows those in power to undermine factual reporting — what Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame said was the definition of good journalism: the best obtainable version of the truth.
This essential element of a self-governing society has been compromised by right-wing media such as Rush Limbaugh and other radio talkers, and especially by Fox News. That began in the 1990s. It has been supercharged in recent years by the internet and social media.
It reached alarming heights in the 2016 presidential election, when thousands of Russian bots and hackers infiltrated Twitter and Facebook, spreading misinformation.
The American press didn’t have a spotless record in the past. Reporters softened the rise of Hitler and Mussolini. Walter Duranty of The New York Times became an apologist for the show trials and crimes of Stalin in the 1930s.
But more often than not, reporters got it right, from uncovering the ghastly conditions in slaughterhouses to forcing a president’s resignation in the Watergate scandal. Investigative reporter Ida B. Wells documented lynchings, creating a movement that eventually brought nationwide attention to this horror.
That was when a consensus of Americans believed the same reality, valued science and expertise, generally held the same moral center.
Now right and left live in their own realities. This makes compromise — the essential ingredient of self-government — impossible. The only other time America was so divided resulted in the Civil War.
Studies show that readers’ and viewers’ own biases affect their perceptions of particular news stories or news organizations. The more extreme their views, the less they trust stories that go against their prejudices.
Nowhere is this more destructive than with climate change.
Studies published in peer-reviewed journals indicate that 97 percent of climate scientists believe in human-caused climate change. Not only that, but this planetary threat is getting worse faster than had been feared.
If 97 percent of the cardiologists I visited thought I needed heart surgery, I would have it.
Yet although 70 percent of Americans accept that climate change is happening, so-called deniers often get equal coverage in news stories. Action is stymied by well-funded misinformation campaigns and politicians bought by the fossil-fuel industries.
Trump, who withdrew the United States from the Paris accords, called climate change a hoax perpetrated by China. Many of his supporters agree.
Meanwhile, the internet allows a daily fire hose of distractions to keep us from focusing on issues that are life-or-death. Mendacious memes from the fringes become Republican talking points.
The working press simply lacks the tools to fight back against the phenomenon. The usual “both sides” approach to coverage, attempting objectivity, doesn’t work when one side is consistently lying.
A republic established during the Age of Reason is highly vulnerable to today’s attacks on reason.
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No wonder in her 1951 book, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exists.”
Capital-T Truth, of course, is a word best used with care.
“True ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify,” philosopher and psychologist William James said. “False ideas are those we cannot.”
Even so, the meaning of truth has been debated by Western thinkers from Aristotle to Freud. The chapter under that heading in Mortimer Adler’s book “The Great Ideas” takes 25 small-print, closely spaced pages.
Also, history is an argument without end, and rightly so. We keep learning about the past. Harry Truman, the last president to lack a college degree, said, “The only new thing in the world is the history you don’t know.”
Yet in the post-truth era, how we view reality is more important than ever.
This is almost as malleable in solid blue regions as it is in Trumpist country.
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For example, many Seattleites take it as “truth” that the police are routinely brutal and biased. They believe that rising numbers of homeless people are a result of the city’s economic success, not because of City Hall’s ever-rising and poorly overseen spending on a complex and multifaceted problem.
The left often thinks of groups, not individuals. “Diversity” means different ethnicities, genders, sexuality, but does it also mean different life paths and viewpoints? Does it include older people, the disabled, conservatives and religious believers?
The leftward lens is distorted by what historians call the anachronistic fallacy, projecting today’s perspectives and values onto moments in the past. Good luck having a conversation about the Civil War with a liberal.
To some on the left, America is a uniquely evil nation — there’s your American exceptionalism. No matter that President Barack Obama reminded us that things were getting better, that this is the “most prosperous, most progressive era in human history” — in no small part because of American leadership.
Liberals are slightly more anti-vaccination than conservatives. No matter that childhood immunization is a great and proven scientific leap that saves lives and protects the general population.
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A zeitgeist, even in educated Seattle, is not synonymous with truth. Yet being willing to seek truth in all its messy complexity is essential to finding it.
And here’s another disconnect: Is it wise to situate a growing metropolitan area in a major earthquake zone, in the shadow of an active volcano?
Living in a post-truth world won’t be easy.
Gold-standard government data, including the census, are at risk of politicization by the Trump administration.
Data itself are vulnerable to manipulation, hence the familiar quote “lies, damned lies and statistics.”
Corporations, enjoying unprecedented power in our Digital Gilded Age, can lie and distort. Corporatespeak, beyond further degrading the language, can be used to conceal hustles and corruption. So can spreadsheets and algorithms. Knowledge is increasingly a trade secret.
Newspapers are struggling, with vast swaths of the country lacking even one local paper. Without serious journalism, which costs money, wrongdoing thrives and democracy is trampled. It doesn’t matter how much “information” people have, especially when so much is disinformation or distraction.
One election or many will not heal our national schism or the threat of lies, cynicism and nihilism.
Good advice comes from diplomat George Kennan, writing at the onset of the Cold War:
“Our first step must be to apprehend, and recognize for what it is, the nature of the movement with which we are dealing. We must study it with same courage, detachment, objectivity and same determination not to be emotionally provoked or unseated by it, with which doctor studies unruly and unreasonable individual.”
At the least, we can hold close the embers of reality and reason, and pass them along until this new Dark Age passes. And hope it does so quickly.
(Jon Talton is the economics columnist for The Seattle Times.)
ILLUSTRATION (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): POSTTRUTH
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Michael_Novakhov shared this story from Trump Investigations. New Abwehr and US political scandals with antisemitic and sexual subtext - Web Review: The goal of these operations , I think, is to prevent the American politicia...
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Michael_Novakhov shared this story from FBI News Review. Mossad chief and security delegation meet with Trump team In a clandestine visit, the head of the Mossad and a security delegation organized by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tr...
10/01/19 10:31 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from FBI News Review. Mossad chief and security delegation meet with Trump team In a clandestine visit, the head of the Mossad and a security delegation organized by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tr...
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10/01/19 10:08 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks
Michael_Novakhov shared this story from The Global Security News. The Bad Jewish Boys and Girls Collection, from Roy Cohn to Anthony Weiner (“Un-Tony Winner”), of the German Intelligence, who gleefully arranged the series of ...
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New Abwehr and US political scandals with antisemitic and sexual subtext - Web Review:
The goal of these operations, I think, is to prevent the American politicians of the Jewish ethnic background to come to the positions of Power. Race is everything for the Neo-Nazi German Intelligence.
new abwehr bad jewish boys and girls by michael novakhov - Google Search
New Abwehr's Bad Jewish Boys and Girls Collection - Web Review
The New Abwehr and the US political scandals with antisemitic subtext - Google Search
The goal of these operations, I think, is to prevent the American politicians of the Jewish ethnic background to come to the positions of Power. Race is everything for the Neo-Nazi German Intelligence.
New Abwehr's Bad Jewish Boys and Girls Collection - Web Review
New Abwehr's Bad Jewish Boys and Girls Collection - Web Review
The Bad Jewish Boys and Girls Collection, from Roy Cohn to Anthony Weiner (“Un-Tony Winner”), of the German Intelligence, who gleefully arranged the series of the “Bolero dances” for them, the stories of rises and falls, as if to demonstrate to the world the moral unfitness of those Juden.
Roy Cohn was a very colorful character, and he is a separate story. Trump and Cohn are like the front and the back covers of the same book. Or rather of one particular chapter of the book: “The German Intelligence, Post WW2 period, 1945 – 2020, The American Operations”.
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Father Walsh with General Douglas MacArthur in Tokyo, 1948
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It is very likely that Roy Cohn was handled by the Germans through Edmund A. Walsh chain, (with the Russian cover, of course), and it is very possible that Cohn was not aware of it.
The German Intelligence, in its past and present reincarnations, in the US, and in the World, and the games that they play, is the big subject, and that’s where the German Hypothesis of Operations “Trump” and “9/11” is, probably, drifting and developing.
Michael Novakhov
9:32 AM 8/19/2018
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In a clandestine visit, the head of the Mossad and a security delegation organized by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travelled to the United States to meet with President-elect Trump’s staff and brief him on security issues.
Itamar Eichner and Tzipi Shmilovitz|Published: 12.17.16 , 21:19
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- The Antisemitic Operations of German Intelligence in US, 1996 – 2018
- Michael Novakhov on Antisemitic Operations of German Intelligence in US, 1996 – 2018
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- Monica Levinsky as the unwitting agent of German Intelligence, in their effort to push the US to the intervention in Kosovo and the war in the Balkans, which Germany used to solidify their presence in the Balkans.
- The “Manhattan Madam” and
- “Eliott Spitzer Scandal“, recycled and carried over to the Mueller’s Investigation, with the clear antisemitic context.
- “The Abedin-Weiner emails dump and sexting affair“: “Were iz the Antizemitizm here, they both are Zemitezzz! Khe-khe-khe…”
And most likely, many, many others.
See Also:
Three episodes do make a pattern.
The goal of these operations, I think, is to prevent the American politicians of the Jewish ethnic background to come to the positions of Power. Race is everything for the Neo-Nazi German Intelligence.
M.N.
8:13 AM 8/11/2018
P.S. My Dear friend Yossi! Could you please help our glorious FBI to solve this puzzle? It looks like they are incapable or unwilling to do this by themselves, without a good push. Everyone will be greatful to you in the end.
M.N.
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Israel is Suspected Again of Assassinating an Enemy’s Rocket …
Jewish Life News (press release) (blog)–Aug 8, 2018
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, President Reuven Rivlin and the head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, at an awards ceremony in Jerusalem to recognize …
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